Scene File Setup for HMC40

I've got no hesitation going up to 12B gain with the HMC40.

If it's convenient, I'd suggest checking out the venue ahead of time - perhaps shoot a couple short test clips.

I'm not one to artificially soften up the image in-camera. You can do that in post. If you do it in-camera, it's irreversible. You might try shooting 30p at 1/30 shutter. Unfortunately, with this cam, shooting 24p doesn't seem to offer any notable advantage over shooting 30p in low light conditions (like it does with Canons). I'd sooner drop the shutter down to 1/30 than soften the image via coring, especially for shooting relatively low motion footage. A real useful tool, in post, if you do use gain aggressively, is MSU's denoising filter for VirtualDub. That filter can be real good for taking a bit of the edge off of noise, with minimal image degradation.
 
It might be nice to have a thread devoted just to this with a few standards.

Settings and an image showing how the scene looks compared to camera default.

or maybe a brief text explaining it and any shooting tips the poster would like to include.

And have it just for that....leave the discussion for elsewhere. Alternatively, the first post could be a master list that someone edits, and the discussion along with people wanting to add files follows later.

I would start, but I don't have my camera yet. (What can brown do for me? It could hurry the heck up!)
 
I've had the HMC40 for a week and a half now and have been playing around with the "scene file option" as well so I'm happy to have your recommendations. I have to say that so far my impressions of the HMC40 are a mixed bag. I think they could for example have implemented the settings switching a bit better without a restart.

I have a similar setup where one bank is for low light and the other for brighter light. I'm having a hard time setting it up to where I like the look. I want a fairly punchy look in terms of color but not so high a contrast setting as most of the Gamma settings have. The gama I like most so far is Cine-Like D. The manual recommends to change the exposure by half a stop for best results with this gamma - but is confusing as to in which direction; over or under. I would guess that they mean to underexpose - any ideas?

Also I have to confess a lack of grasping the intent behind the separate "matrix" setting. Can anyone help me understand exactly what that is affecting? I find that mixing and matching has not helped me figure this out yet.

For my bright setting I set my detail coring to - 7. I figure it is simply noise removal so why have it but at the same time my limited testing (or poor eyes!) don't see a difference, so I wonder if the setting is only really applicable to low light fine grained control.

It is nice to be able to compare note like this!
 
I have a similar setup where one bank is for low light and the other for brighter light.
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Great minds thing alike. :D

I was planning on using Scene-1 for daylight and Scene-2 for low light. That seemed to be the most logical usage.

Here in the LA area, we are getting several days of rain, so I'll have to wait a few days before I can go out and try the different Detail Coring settings on the streets. I know that +24dB gain reduces sharpness and increased Detail Coring reduces sharpness, but if it helps with the image noise, a slight loss in sharpness may be worth it.

At least that's the theory, the real world test should be interesting to see if it works as planned....


Bob Diaz
 
rich_r said:
If you search around there is a Panasonic document that describes the various values in the scene file menu really well. The one I found is for the HMC150 which has Master Pedestal values that range from -100 to 100 (rather than the -15 to 15 on the HMC40). But all of the other settings are the same with the same ranges. That doc lists the six scene files available on the HMC150 (out of the box).
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so sorry, i might be a little retarded but...i couldn't find such document explaining what all the settings mean.
this is my first prosumer camera and is annoying not known why i am doing the changes i did.
 
Hello Listers,

I just received my HMC40 yippee! I am curious if anyone has done any work matching scene files with the 40 to the P2 Big brother HPX170? One of my uses for this cam is as a B-Cam so anyone with such an interest please relate your experience. I'm hoping the Panny mojo will be close enough to make this work.

Best Regards,
Grant
 
ggrantly said:
Hello Listers,

I just received my HMC40 yippee! I am curious if anyone has done any work matching scene files with the 40 to the P2 Big brother HPX170? One of my uses for this cam is as a B-Cam so anyone with such an interest please relate your experience. I'm hoping the Panny mojo will be close enough to make this work.

Best Regards,
Grant
Click to expand...
Yes, I have used some of the HPX170 scene files. They seem to work out pretty well. But since I don't have an HPX170 I can't say how well they compare. Hopefully when Barry release's is HMC150/HMC40 book we can get a little better insight into how the scene files compare.

Hurry-up Barry, we're waiting. :cry:
 
BobDiaz said:
Barry, your way is also logical. I got to thinking about the reverse of my table...

For 10 seconds of 24p footage:

1 second setting: Record for 4 minutes.

10 second setting: Record for 40 minutes.

30 second setting: Record for 2 hours.

1 minute setting: Record for 4 hours.

2 minute setting: Record for 8 hours.


Bob Diaz
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ok, so i'm a little confused. i don't know if it's just late or what

i'm trying to record a video that needs to be in the end exactly 3:18 (3 minutes 18 seconds)

so the formula that i should use should be

(intervals in seconds) x (fps) x (desired video length) = (how long to record for)

so if i shoot in 1 second intervals, at 24 fps (which with the hmc 40 i pretty much have to), and i want the ending length to be 198 seconds (3 minutes and 18 seconds), i get...

1x24x198 = 4,752

which 4,752 seconds is 79 minutes and 12 seconds. So i should be able to let the camera roll for 79 minutes and 12 seconds and in the end, when i play it back, it'll only be 3:18 long.

does this formula check out for any other kind of calculation that one would need to do for figuring out how long to record during interval recordings?
 
In answer to your question, I have to assume that the 24p sequence is being played back at 24p. I know that sounds funny, but if the 24p sequence is played back at 30p or 60p, all the numbers are different... A 1 frame per second time lapse played by at 24p results in a speed increase of 24x. Thus, 24 seconds results in 1 second of footage.

i'm trying to record a video that needs to be in the end exactly 3:18 (3 minutes 18 seconds)
Click to expand...

Let me start by converting this to seconds: 3 minutes x 60 seconds per minute = 180 seconds. Add the 18 seconds to 180 seconds equals 198 seconds.

Playback time of 198 seconds x the speed increase of 24x = 4,752 seconds.

That comes to 79 minutes and 12 seconds OR 1 hour, 19 minutes, and 12 seconds.


Bob Diaz
 
I noticed that the standard scene files that ship with the camera don't produce a very vivid image ala DVX100. I have been messing around with some of the values and now the colors are much richer. Barry G's book comes with a CD that enables you to view the effects of changing the various values, pretty useful. The best way is to connect an external monitor via HDMI and play around with the setting as you don't see the effect of them in the LCD I think.

The bummer with this camera is that it does not allow you to load scene files from you SD card but if you can look at the scene files that Barry provides in a text editor and manually enter the values. I think this is pretty mean on Panasonic's part as I'm sure it's just a few lines of extra firmware code.

I will post my scene files here as I have to create a few for an upcoming project.

Cheers
Richard
www.VortexVideoBlog.com
 
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